As Oscar time gets closer, we're all looking at the nominees and making our guesses as to who's gonna win what. (Don't worry: I'll post predictions in plenty of time to help you fill out your office pool entry!) And the Best Picture category this year may be the most interesting: there's no clear front-runner, no obvious favorite, and the slate of nominees is, perhaps, the most evenly matched in a long while. Each of these five very different films -- alphabetically, Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen -- has plenty of precedent among the Best Picture winners of the past, too.

If you're bowing to The Queen, for instance, you'll find lots of movies dominated by strong women in Oscar's past ... and you'll probably enjoy checking out these films while we wait for the ceremony:

Rebecca (1940): Joan Fontaine stars as a woman so depersonalized by her new identity as the new wife of Laurence Olivier's Max de Winter that we never even learn her first name. And then she finds herself haunted by the first Mrs. de Winter, in what is one of Hitchcock's greatest films, one that is deeply psychologically disturbing without having to resort to anything supernatural.

Mrs. Miniver (1942): Greer Garson stars as the stalwart English mum who holds her family together -- or tries to, at least -- as war comes to the peaceful countryside and threatens not just life and limb but home and hearth. Stiff upper lip and all that, cheerio.

All About Eve (1950): Bette Davis stars in a role that made her iconic, as a washed-up actress bitter over her young rival's surpassing of her ... or is she? This is a great hoaxer of a film.

Annie Hall (1977): Another iconic character -- Diane Keaton embodies the titular modern woman as she spars with Woody Allen and ponders such conundrums as whether it's socially acceptable to enter a movie theater after the movie has started.

Out of Africa (1985): Meryl Streep stars as a Danish author in a tale about a woman striving for independence ... and finding it in one of the last wild places left on Earth.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us